Thursday, 18 June 2015

"London, New York, Paris, Munich: Everyone's Talking about Pop Music" is an exhibition curated by Harry Pye with Astrid Horkheimer taking place in Hackney Downs Studio this Summer which will co-incide with the album launch of Micko Westmoreland's "Your's ETC Abc" A galaxy of stars will be exhibiting ART connected to POP including...

Dominic from Luton (a.k.a Dominic Allan) has exhibited his work at Cardiff Contemporary, The Saatchi Gallery in London and The Phoenix Gallery in Exeter. The above image is "Paul Young from Luton" (2013 c-type print)

Julie Bennett creates distinctive gestural paintings to critically engage with the discourse surrounding the cult of celebrity in contemporary society. Bennett looks at the effect of fame, glamour and beauty through the re-appropriation of mass-mediated images of anonymous faces surrounding celebrities. She translates every day faces into bold, aspirational multi-layered works of art.Bennett has exhibited solo and in various group exhibitions. National exhibitions include those at Victoria and Albert Museum (2010), Sartorial Gallery (2009), Saatchi online (2008) and Transition Gallery (2008).
Astrid Horkheimer is a writer and curator. She will be exhibiting Pop Art collages and her old secondary schoolbooks from 1987 like below:

Sarah Doyle has shown her art internationally in Japan, New York and Germany and has collaborated with Elle magazine, Transition Gallery, Tatty Devine, Surface 2 Air, Marmalade Magazine, Arty Magazine. Her animation work was shown at the Whitechapel Gallery as part of the Late Nights Programme and she was the winner of the New Artist Category at The Elle Style Awards. Sarah studied Art at Manchester Metropolitan University and Central Saint Martins College of Art London. She will be exhibiting Kate Bush inspired work like below...

Paul Hamilton wrote an award-winning book about Peter Cook, was the film critic for The Idler magazine for 10 years, and has made some albums with bands no-one has ever heard of (Yellowjack, anyone? Bisonics mean anything?).

Bob London is an artist and illustrator.
He has exhibited worldwide, and drawn live at various events including
'Heavy Pencil' at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.
He has previously been selected for the BP Portrait Awards exhibition
at the National Portrait Gallery.

Hugh Mendes has had solo shows of his obituary paintings in London, Frankfurt and California.His work can be found in the collections of Bill Wyman, Jerry Hall and Kenny Schachter, and Wooster projections in New York. (Above is Hugh's obituary painting of Captain Beefheart.)

Liam Scully is an artist and curator who has had solo shows at The Residence Gallery.

Geraldine Swayne is an artist and musician. She often works in miniature in enamel on metal.She's had recent shows at The Fine Art Society, The Jerwood Space, and The Lawrence Alkin Gallery.

Team Beswick & Pye is a duo which consists of Gordon Beswick and Harry Pye. Gordon Beswick was educated at Newcastle Under Lyme and Brighton College of Art. Gordon Beswick’s films have been shown at Tate Britain, The South London Gallery and The Institute of Contemporary Art. Harry Pye has curated many exhibitions including ‘100 Mothers’, ‘Viva Pablo’ and ‘For Peel’. Collaborative paintings by Gordon and Harry have appeared in celebrated shows at Sartorial Contemporary Art in King’s Cross and Galeria Thomas Cohn in Sao Paulo.
In November 2012 Beswick & Pye were featured in The Discerning Eye exhibition at the Mall Gallery. Their painting of Brian Jones (see above) is featured on the gate fold sleeve of Micko Westmoreland's album.

Barry Thompson is an award winning artist who graduated from The Royal College in 2005.He will be exhibiting 3 works inspired by his love of Kurt Cobain.
Sandra Turnbull is a painter whose works have been exhibited at Elefest, The Woburn Gallery, and Chester University. Before becoming a full time artist, Sandra worked in the music industry, managing talent including Eurythmics, Shakespeare's Sister and Londonbeat.

Thursday, 4 June 2015

Last night I went to The Proud Archivist in Hertford Road N.1 to see some splendid new Panter paintings.
Art of The Mixtape is a show well worth seeing. In the 1960s Andy Warhol painted the can of Campbell soup and bottle of Coca Cola he had for lunch each day, David Hockney painted a packet of "Ty-phoo Tea" and Peter Blake painted his fave Rock & Rollers and Movie Stars. Horace's work follows in the footsteps of these Godfather's of Pop Art. To Horace, his collection of demo-cassette/mixtapes are ‘repositories of memory’ because they evoke a specific period of music history between the reel-to-reel tape and the compact disc and because music itself, even just a song title, provokes a stirring of memory/nostalgia. Each painting has been researched to serve as an accurate reminder of a great period when bands would take these small pieces of plastic home and listen to what they had recorded that day in the recording studio.
The show runs until the 30th of June and The Proud Archivist is open: Mo,Tu,We,Th,Fr,Sa,Su 8:00 am-10:30 pm
If you're a fan of The Specials you may be interested in buying a ticket for an event taking place at Proud on The 16th of June called "Classic Album Sunday" - The debut album by the 2-Tone legends will be played in full and then Horace will then be doing a Q&A